Been a while...

 Well.

This morning began with an email announcing a deal with the union at one of our locations. Great news, and something I wanted to see amplified.

As it worked out, I had a working session today with the SharePoint guy who's been helping me build our new site. While we were talking, I mentioned the deal; he clearly hadn't heard - an interesting look at the way a piece of news that hugely affects our entire organization only really gets in front of those people who've been boots-on-the-ground. He and I talked about unions for a minute, and he mentioned a doc on Netflix he said was incredibly good.

After we finished our sandbox session, I edited the morning's announcement, and put it in the news web part.

And, after work, I turned on the doc.

It's hard for me to truly convey how watching this feels. Ambivalent, absolutely; but that barely touches the experience. I've watched a zillion documentaries in my life, but I've never before been anything remotely like the subject; here - at my age - with my career - 9 to 5 draws some blood.

One irony about this movie is that it focuses on SECRETARIES, uniting and becoming a force.

For an awful lot of my career - I am just enough years behind the women featured here - women's professional organizations have overlooked secretaries.

It is the irony of my age, that ten years before me, the center of gravity of women in offices was in the secretarial and clerical pool. So to organize women office workers was to organize clerical and secretarial workers.

By the time I came along... secretaries were "administrative assistants" - and anyone (any woman) who chose to do that job was sort of being pretended away. Women wanted business degrees and "real" jobs, and it was juuuuussst about time to call it old-fashioned to type for a living.

So women's professional orgs became focused on "real" professional women.

Admins became that bubble off to one side on the org chart, and became invisible.

My career marks the beginning of the "Except the admin" era. At the 1:14:30 mark of the documentary, there's one of those tonal shifts as we move toward the final chapter of the story - and the sound bite is: "Secretaries disappeared."

Which they did. Pushed downward into titles explicitly making us subservient, now admin "assistants" - pushed out and up, to do *anything* but typing memos, because that became shameful, not enough, for the peasants. The number of times I have endured people telling me I could basically "do better" - because, of course, what I choose to do is embarrassing, it's peon stuff. That one time a manager, with no malice intended, asked me about admin work because his wife was bored and she should be able to get an admin job easily.

I haven't apologized for the work I chose to do, for at least fifteen years. In my current job (nearly ten years), I am PROUD beyond expressing it, of the service I provide to each and every one of you in America. I literally feed you. Without what I do, it would not happen. What I do now is more important, even, than my work with the Federal Reserve Bank was, affects more of you, and is more deeply fundamental.

My career is neither trivial nor dismissable, yet it is routinely dismissed, and constantly, merely for its nature. I am not Mary Tyler Moore, nor Lily Tomlin. I belong to no union, because I'm that bubble on the side of the org chart. I blazed no trails, just have tucked in and made my way through several of the worst economies of the past 50 years - and covered myself in no glory at all. My activism is for other people, not myself. I am except the admin personified. And what once was Secretaries' Day, a celebration of professionals, is now Administrative Professionals day/week/month, an occasion of lip service par excellence which frequently is focused on flowers and gendered pap. (I hasten to say that my company has a highly creative and thoughtful person who manages our recognition. But the occasion itself does absolutely beg for lip service, and it gets it.)

9 to 5, the organization, is notable for being a women's movement that embraced intersectionality from its start. That is more than most white feminism of its time ever did.

It's also why I never heard of it, even having seen that movie with the same name. I was a WHITE feminist, until at least 2020 really. I didn't realize it, but the changes of the past several years are clear to me. I embrace that. And I recognize this: I was not intersectional because I didn't "get it". At all.

And so, this intersectional organization, that saw secretaries "disappear" at the 1:14:30 mark of the documentary... stopped being about me. It shifted focus to child care, it got its ass out of the office - indeed, out of typical "9 to 5" focus.

There is a woman in the doc who says at 1:17:38 or so, "By the time I came in as a young woman" things were different, nobody calls me their girl, etc. I can't tell whether she may be close to my age (55) or quite a lot younger, but I can say - by the time I came in, it was only *getting* different. I still made my share of coffee, for a lot of years - and I never, ever drank coffee. It was explicitly a job thing, and always a STUPID job thing. I never had sexual harassment issues with a manager, but I certainly had an unbelievable idiot or two. I never DIDN'T have anyone who thought my work was "less-than", for decades there. So, good for her.

But I am glad 9 to 5/925 did look away, did seek to get out of corporate office. I'm insulated and privileged, working in a cube or from home, in my side-bubble.

"Passion" is dumb

The English language once had a word expressing romantic or apopleptic fervor, a word that even sounded like a sibilant storm, opening with a plosive, ending with softness. It denoted special extremity.

Now we have this.

My brother and I discussed the bewildering primacy of the term "passion" back when we attended the second JRW conference, many long years ago. Agents reacting to first pages, or discussing what they were looking for in queries and stories, bandied it about almost more than any other word. I began to wish it were possible to mute words on the entire internet, early in my first experience of querying.

Even when I was young (again, this was many moons ago), the word actually embarrassed me. Maybe because it still did have some power - and implications - back then. But I've never in my life said or thought or felt I was "passionately" in love with a person, and as proud as I am of my career and invested as I am in my work, "passion" is not and I actually hope never will be a word I apply to doing it. That would be ridiculous.

So The Atlantic's takedown of the absurdities we attach to job listing and hunting resonates with my cranky old heart - passionless as it may be.

Like that job, and like so many things, I spent a decent span of my twenties and thirties under the impression that I was supposed to feel apologetic. I didn't have a sexy job for which I held a white-hot torch; I hadn't even gone through specific education geared toward it. My teen years: I was a kid. I didn't know what I wanted to do or "become" and, as much as it was clear I was supposed to, I honestly didn't care enough to develop any fake passions for business or law or even the arts. Majoring in theater where I did cured me of interest in going into THAT - though it probably laid some groundwork for me as an author.

Students in the 80s who seemed into business degrees bewildered me for directing their lives at, basically, just making money - not even making actual things, or having any impact on anything. Graduate school seemed like a lot of work, so a lot of what are referred to as "The Professions" (as if nothing else is) didn't draw me for a second. School for creativity seemed oxymoronic, and yet was the only way I could comprehend to become any sort of artist, and so if there ever had been a visual or musical or other sort of artist inside me (there wasn't), I'd have killed it myself, striving for it.

I never developed a groove that had anything to do with making my living.

Beloved Ex, now. He was a different story. He wanted very much to find a way to make a living that energized him mentally, emotionally. It didn't help our brief marriage, unfortunately, because by the time a truly stunning opportunity came for him - it meant rooting ourselves in Ohio, and I freaked out hard core, and ... yeah, I didn't want to sabotage his opportunity, but I did, AND I didn't want to stay in Ohio. And I didn't. Lots of birds killed with that boulder, and that boulder ... welp, it was passion, in its way.

For me, life's always been lived outside of any office. I make friends, sure. I have experienced strong loyalties and many emotions, in a hundred offices from here all the way back to Ohio. But, at the end of the day, I would never have gone into any of them if they weren't paying me.

Passion's for poorly written poems. It's been no way for me to get things done.

Doesn't make me any less excellent at what I do for a paycheck. Doesn't mean I do not care. I'm not a customer service ninja (which sounds like a bad idea, honestly, what with the kill-y parts of ninja-dom - though, really, the Orientalist stereotyping of "ninja", "sensei", and "guru" is a problem, and also, why are so many of the terms noted like this?), I don't lose sleep at night dreaming naughty dreams of vendor management or the passionate joys of meeting preparation. You want an obsessive or any other kind of job-extremist, I'm not your candidate - and, honestly? I think MOST PEOPLE aren't.

MOST JOBS, let's be candid, are just jobs. They're not sexy, they're not hot lovers, they're not things that get our motors revving. If we're fortunate, and have the right kind of approach, the best most of us can expect from employment is the opportunity to work a good puzzle. Figure out how best to do a thing, then do it, and feel like a rockstar for widgeting, or networking, or calming down some numbers that get uppity.

"Job" is not a word stormy with sibilance. It doesn't start plosive, but with a chop. It ends utilitarian, not reassuringly with a nice, soft N. It's short and ordinary and gets its work done efficiently, nondescriptly.

And it's one of the great words in most of our lives, when we're lucky enough to get one that doesn't beat us down but does provide security. Maybe it gives more than merely that. Great!

But work is work.

They don't call it rapture, for good reason.

"You can do ANYTHING you set your mind to."

25 years ago now, having left my marriage and come home to Virginia, I found myself in a job with one of the best managers I've ever known, a woman I'll call C. C managed a keen balance between getting the ratty jobs done but finding each employee's talents, and playing to them. So it was that, as a secretary, I ended up assisting the guy who was writing a book. And the IT guy. Writing our newsletter. And, by the end, taking care of orphan clients (we were an insurance and financial services agency).

It was just at the moment I was about to be sent to Minnesota in February for securities training that I left that gig. But I never did forget that manager, and C stands out to this day as one of the smartest people I've ever worked with. And I've worked with some great, wise people.

All this time later, I have found a position where I get to do my own balancing - still a secretary, but one with decades more experience on the resume, and in a company/with a team where I have been able, almost singlehanded, to define my job. I get to play to my own strengths now.

Not long ago, I was thinking again about how I ended up being a secretary. Yeah, it was the early and mid-80s that formed me, and yeah I was VERY much an underachiever during my early career (though, looking at that job I mentioned above - maybe not so lacking in gumption as I have told myself for so long now) ... but nothing was stopping me from pursuing some more specific or lucrative or creative ambition.

But, the thing is: my parents always told me, "You can do anything you set your mind to."

Here is the problem: they never gave me specifics. Mom might occasionally talk about things *she* would wish to do, or which she found prestigious.

But neither my mom nor my dad ever did as C did: took up the thread of what I loved, or was good at (which were not entirely the same thing), and revealed to me the particular things my talents or my abilities could lead to. Nope, not even my dad. And he was a professor - a student advisor. His very life and career were dedicated to pushing people toward success.

Or ... maybe just to knowledge. To understanding those concepts he himself taught, or to harnessing those from other disciplines, which his students were studying. Synthesizing these to the tools to reach their specific goals.

My dad was encouraging to a fault - but the fault was, he just opened the doors wide. He provided no guide but "anything" - and that was too much. Overwhelming, or under.

I have always known that what I do is "less" in the eyes of other people; nobody's subtle about it. I basically fell into it to make a living. Doing what I do was not a dream, wasn't something I *sought*. I have made it mine, and I'm not complaining nor regretting. But it, in the barest and least freighted, but clearest sense of the phrase, "is what it is."



I could do anything I set my mind to. Sure. But in high school, I already knew I was directionless.

And MOST OF US ARE as teenagers. And that is okay.

But then majoring in Theater (or, insufferably, Theatre/Dance, at my insufferable alma mater) never was going to get me famous and wealthy and yield a successful movie star at the end of college.

(To which I now say: Thank MAUD.)

But it wasn't getting me anywhere else, either. Working on the crew was pizza money and fun, not a career trajectory. Our department wasn't good enough to provide one of those, frankly.

And I could type.

So I fell into my first jobs, my early talents - whatever they might have been - sublimated to make a living, and over the years I've done well, or just done *enough*, and scrabbled and fought my way to giving a damn ... and here we are.



I am proud of my work, and I love what I do. But don't ever think that this was my fantasy. Or even my calling. It was barely my *aptitude*, even, for a while there.





This morning, musing to a friend at work that my hair was looking particularly teased-and-tapered in an 80s sort of way, I pulled up Beauty and the Beat on my phone, and revisited that time before directionlessness became ... well, to borrow one of the Go-Go's song titles, Automatic.

The Go-Go's, I think, may seem a bit bugglegum and maybe even gimmicky these days. But that first album, steeped in 1981 and its New Wave-ness, was not a feather-light pop concoction. There is a menace in the chords. This album is bouncy, but it's bouncing on bruises, and it's propulsive. (Automatic is very dark and affecting. It *still* hits me in a very deep place, perhaps the more for life's experience rather than less.)

And this album is inextricably linked to the one person, before C, who ever pointed me at anything specific.

It was my brother.

I can't remember how it came up, and how it ever seemed "real" at all - and, the fact is, the moment of this memory may not have lasted more than a few days. But my brother, for some reason, excitedly encouraged me to get a band together, like the Go-Go's. To cover them, for Stunt Talent Night. He pointed to Kathy Valentine, and said I could do what she did.

It didn't change my life - or, at least, it didn't set me on a path. But my brother was the only family member who ever looked at anything in me, and pointed to anything at all. He didn't say "You can do anything you set your mind to."

He said, "You could do THAT."


I was too shy. I didn't know any musicians. Time ticked on, the moment passed, I never did it. Years later, I still entertained the odd fantasy of being a drummer - or, later still, a lead singer. But instead I watched Beloved Ex do it, and was still too shy. And never thought to connect to the many musicians we did know then, to try to become one of them. Well, never thought of it seriously. Never had the confidence to try.

And I had a job. And hadn't, perhaps, divested myself of the vague idea I might become wealthy and famous by sitting around waiting, hopefully being 80s-foxy enough for the world just to arrange its attention and money around me. Or maybe being a writer. Or just getting by, day to day.

There were a lot of years of getting by, long periods of time lived day to day.

And, not in the least ironically at all, it was my brother, again, who pointed me at something, years later. Aged 35, he asked me to go to a writers' conference ... and we all know how that has gone. Still the world has not arranged itself around my ridiculous success. But at least I consider myself something more than a 'nartist now.


I don't wish things had gone some other way. My life is an awfully good one to live, and the means to my living never has been the most important thing to me (the people I work with are, though). The idea of an alternative life in which What I Do *was* more important is no source of regret for me; perhaps in that life, my soul would not have been the one I have here and now, and my soul means everything to me.

No, I don't wish things had gone differently at all.

Just: looking at my parents. Thinking of the way C managed the people she worked with. I'm actually just surprised it *didn't* go differently. And curiously grateful I failed to have certain dreams ... ? What I did have was people like C, and others, and enough privilege to say I've made my way successfully, even if not prestigiously.


And I'm doubly grateful for that big brother, too. Turns out - he's actually even more special than I understood. Back in those years when I idolized him so, and didn't even know why.

Work (the Paid Kind)

The only use spam comments have is to remind me of the occasional old post I don't hate rediscovering. Today's special was this one. I remember that day, but my memory is unlike what is said in the post. Funny how brains work.

Yet again, though, it gets me thinking about my current gig. For a long time, I still thought of this as my "new" job - and yet, in a career blessed with so many reorgs and layoffs, it is by a huge margin the position I have held for the longest time in my history.

For decades, I never kept a single job for more than two years. By and large, this speaks to the nature of the economy since I began participating in it; and only a few of my job changes came at my own hands, as promotions of sorts. When I was with a certain large securities firm no longer as-such in existence, my tenure was over five years, but I held four jobs in that time: and every change was upwardly mobile, and every change was at my own instigation. But mostly, I am a product of the ever-"evolving" (growth-and-shareholder-obsessed) economic times I came of age in.

So realizing recently that I've been with my team, my "new" company, for three and a half years has been curious.

It doesn't feel like a long time, compared to the most important jobs I hold in my memory. It also REALLY doesn't feel like I've reached (or distantly passed) an endpoint, which I have felt even in jobs I have loved in the past. Two years and I become afraid. Two years, and I see change whether I want to or not. My last job, which I was proud to hold and did not want to leave, lasted two and a half, and I was giddy with fear just because of my own presumed expiration dating ... slightly before I realized that the changes around me gave me reason to be giddy with fear because I recognized what was going on. I left. And almost immediately, the cliff I'd been perched upon crumbled. I was safe, but it was heartbreaking.

And I am still safe.

The things I have accomplished in this position, with this company, pretty easily surpass anything I have been able to manage before.

When I began to look afield, after a couple internal interviews with said previous employer, I reached out to someone I knew from HR there, who had left. And ended up with the company she went to.

She had recommended me to my now-team, specifically my now-executive, knowing that I was a seasoned admin and he was unseasoned with having one, and that I would be able not only to step into required competencies, but also to form the work I'd do and essentially train my team to have an admin at all. The unwritten side of this was that she knew I'd be able to create my own work.

The way this has played out is that I have created my own terms.

My team don't have me doing PowerPoints to speak of, I rarely write memos that aren't my own idea, and apart from monitoring expenses for compliance and speaking to my direct boss's availability, I don't do a lot of the things most people THINK secretaries spend our lives on.

When I first started, one of the managers under my boss's care jumped in with both feet. He had me working on a lot of things, but one key one remains a core part of my work - albeit now in a very different way.

Both Feet left our company years ago, and in his absence, I picked up a great deal in his area. It took a long time to fill his position, so by the time we did so, I was uppity in the extreme in this department. So the new guy came into a situation with a secretary already managing up. And he seems to have been willing to leave me to it. With the result that that administrative tedium I picked up way back when is now an area in which I have streamlined, assertively managed, and brought into an entirely new proportion.

I've saved my company a crap-ton of money, on my own initiative, cemented best practices, insert-your-least-favorite-corporate-speak here. Because I cared, and because nobody else was doing this work, and because nobody told me not to.



I lived right up to what that HR person expected of me, and then some.


***


So re-reading that old post was interesting, in the context of my continued realization that I seem to be in a job well on its way to Methuselah status as far as my CV goes. I see in it a bit of the same sinking-my-teeth-in/getting-it-done-ery that has served me here, and even some of the amusement I felt at losing a job I so desperately hated (but which I took a long time to realize I did).

I still call that the worst April Fool's Day joke ever - not least as they jumped the gun by a day on the punchline.

Like Ray-ye-yain On Your Admin Day!

"They" always say to be careful what you wish for. Let us add to that the codicil, perhaps, to be careful what you're thankful for.

Today was Administrative Professionals Day, or if you prefer, this week is AP week. I, of course, prefer "secretary", but that has been done to death on this blog. For now, anyway. Let it be said, the memories are still kind, regarding the one guy I ever worked with who found a Secretaries' Day card. That's thoughtfulness, right there.

And today I said to a couple people how much I like where I work now - how they don't fiddle away excessive funds on expensive dead flowers, but give us things we are likely to use/enjoy/appreciate. Last year, enormous live potted plant arrangements, in my case a big geranium mingled with the spiky fronds of a grass of some sort. It is still with me, just went outside this morning for the new spring. Year before that, it was Harry & David gift boxes - nice fruits and not all sorts of fattening things.

Given the past year and a half or so of working on that waistline and so forth, I particularly treasure the latter point, the absence of waist-busting shows of appreciation.

Naturally, putting too fine a point on that item was poor thinking on my part. This year's gift came from clients. Translation: a Taste of Chicago box, filled with such goodies as a cheesecake sampler (four kinds) and a true Chicago pizza from a famed place I actually have been to.

Thank heavens for family. I have a handy-dandy mom and stepfather close by, and keep them around for just such occasions. And it turned out almost too perfectly, in fact - our usual Friday family night looks bad, as my stepfather has a procedure Friday which will leave him either out of it and/or in pain. And mom had been planning pizza for supper, too.

And, you know, with his ongoing health issues and my mom's extended commitments as caregiver, it doesn't feel awful to show up now and then with a really good treat like that. It seems to break up the grind for her sometimes, and of course an enjoyable meal doesn't go amiss with him.


The title above refers to the amused chagrin you can feel, bragging that your employer - even while so massively involved with almost every variety of food on the continent - doesn't fatten you up ... and the happiness that when they ruin your brag, you can turn around and dent the caloric damage by celebrating family night a couple days early.

When your stepfather can enjoy eating, and your mom was planning for pizza.

Collection

What RuPaul says about identity here resonates with me. Take a look at my header sometimes - and playing with all the colors in the crayon box? Yes. That. Full audio of the interview here.

There is so much to unpack at this link. The main article is a fascinating view, but the fact is it took me to some personal places it frustrates me nobody ever seems to give a hang about. To wit: the juxtaposition of a woman professor being mistaken for a secretary (itself a fascinating word choice, ahem) and “There are any number of little indignities that do befall female professors” is, if not personally insulting, an interesting coincidence I frankly think is not one. It’s things like this that bring me to that “except the admin” place, and marginalize my not at all insignificant career and life choices. It’s things like this that lead me not to concern myself (“enough”?) about the gender pay gap, because admins get paid less than everyone else in any office, and we’re mostly women, and that’s the bed I seem to have made. I see no interest from anyone who’s NOT an admin in this, and so it’s hard for me to get on board complaints of other women getting paid less. My entire line of work gets paid less and nobody cares but me. Why am I supposed to freak out that other women get paid less for jobs men actually DO do more commonly? Oh, because those are real jobs.

Here's a great look at the way we look at stats and studies ... and the lenses that distort what gets seen after a study.

Heh - I do love a sarcastic take on The Wrongers. Take a lovely look at all the things you are probably messing UP! Repent! Or just smirk and shrug and laugh at those who ruin perfectly simple things for the rest of us. This one is the best, for (a) the absence of the supposed content (have to click another link - hey guys, you did it wrong!) and (b) the comments. Heh.

Rabbit Holes

Today, I was talking with my oldest friend, The Elfin One, and she asked how my mom and stepfather are doing. He is the one to whom I've alluded a time or two, who has for some years now been slowly dying. A part of this has been deterioration of his cognition. ... and my mom has endured a chronic, profound disruption of her sleep patterns, as he loses track of time completely. The result is she's not quite the woman of stunning recall I have always been used to her being.

TEO asked me whether this is stress or some reflection of an organic problem. I think it's the sleep issues, the fear and unceasing demands. But it's so easy to forget ... that she forgets. With my stepfather, we've grown used to his lapses.

Last week, she came to my house and thought she had never seen the painting I did in my upstairs bathroom ... six months ago or more.

My mom is fully down the rabbit hole with my stepfather. And honestly, she's getting a little rabbity.


The next question is, "Diane, how are you?"

My response to this tends to be some combination of bewilderment and dismissiveness. I'm *aware* this is hard on me too, but I'm much more aware how much easier it is for me than it is for my mom. There's a tendency to push off sympathy so people will spend it, and their prayers, on my mom instead.

Not with TEO. With my oldest, best friend, I can be honest (with my brother too). And I realized where I stand.

I'm like standing guard at the entrance to the rabbit hole.



G-d has been especially kind to me of late. A few months ago, it was stress helping them do their taxes, and for the past few months I've been doing all I can to be not only on call if they need me, but also to just spend time as much as I can. To be an escape valve and a social distraction that is NOT demanding for them.

There's been a lot of social distraction for them lately - family, after family, after family - and my mom is incapable of not *hosting* her family. So for some weeks, as much as we LOVE them, visit after visit has had her fretting over what to cook, had her shopping, had her squiring loved ones around, had her socially "on" in a way that alone can be demanding. As someone who's lived alone for the bulk of my adult life, over twenty years now, I know how exhausting joy can be. Simply smiling all day - it is a pleasure to be with people, but I come home absolutely shot, and aching for my solitude, my home, the furbabies.

For me, there's been a lot of work distraction lately. Three solid weeks now of quite HIGH productivity - prep for our annual meeting, onboarding an exec I've been waiting for over a year and half, and this past week has been an apple pie hubbub. Multitasking extraordiaire.

I'm the lucky one: I'm not down in that rabbit hole, my world is still the real world. I get to sleep normally. And I have a job with the most extreme level of satisfaction I have ever enjoyed - which is saying something very significant.



So now my own question.

How do you hope your mom can have a life like that - productive, healthy, stimulating ... knowing what has to come for her to have that?

Yeah.

Work and The Wrong Work

The past three weeks at my job have been busy, productive, and VERY gratifying. I've made great progress on our annual meeting, onboarded a long-awaited exec in the area of my department for which I provide the most support (and I like him!), and finally begun denting a digital organizational nightmare for that department, which is going to a satisfying accomplishment when it is done.

That last one took up a decent part of my day today. Shew, tedious. Not fun, like being ahead of the game on the meeting, and knowing what I'm doing. Or exciting, like meeting someone who looks to be eager to tackle the work I've been trying to get my arms around for a year now.

But I gave it a run for its money today. So.



Oh, and the other part of this post. "The Wrong Work" - what'd she mean by *that*??

Ahem.

Y'all know what a plot bunny is?

Do you ever find a work  you've deliberately planned can be a plot bunny?

It's a funny thing. I'm actually little prone to chasing story ideas around; I seem not to be very promiscuous when it comes to subjects to write about.

All those years ago - when I attended my first JRW Conference with my brother - when I first entertained the delusion I could be an author - when I found, not long after, Clovis I ... Well, not long after *that*, I found a related subject, which is the WIP now.

And I also happened to work on that family history.

And I knew the third novel was going to be that story.

That story has not distracted me, through these years. I still assume it'll be my third novel, in the way you assume the sun will come up in the east. You don't think about it much, but you count on it anyway.



So.

Guess why I'm asking y'all about plot bunnies. Thoughts?

PowerPoint is Like Twitter

One of the things you run into if you work in almost any office is the ubiquitous misconception that PowerPoint is an program in any way suited to creating a text document. PowerPoint is not Word, and there are umpteen reasons for that, but it also *is* used – perhaps more than not – for documents other than presentations, at least in-person, spoken, before-a-live-audience presentations. PPT has a certain fame outside its drily intended purpose(s) thanks to David Byrne, and that is sometimes my saving grace when painfullystakingly working to edit a report we produce weekly, which some of my kids think is like a book report.

My theory regarding PPT's unique uses and misuses is that the concept of “slides” versus “pages” makes it seem to the brain that there is a buffet table with multiple individual offerings of information, whereas Word can seem like one stupendous serving of text. Excel is a dizzying menu you can’t read from where you're standing, and when you get close enough for your glasses to help you, you find out the whole thing’s in Swahili, and darn if that’s not on your list of spoken (nor read) languages.

The problem with the buffet is, given the limitations of the sideboard, each element on it has only so much space.


This space is best not set out as if it were a full, sit-down supper. This space should not come with its own separate plates, utensils, napkins, glassware, and so on.


And, given the parameters of a pot luck smorgasbord, this space is always going to attract some cooks who will insist upon overdoing their contributions.

You cannot equip text on a PPT slide with full grammatical formality. You cannot indulge in full sentences, elegant (or not) descriptors, nor (for Maud’s sake, even I can’t tolerate this anymore) DOUBLE SPACES AFTER PERIODS. Forget about using “a”, “the”, and any conjugation of the verb “to be”. Put out the dish you have to serve, present it with pride, and be done. Garnish is for the graphics, but the text you write must be simple – and short.

I had a boss once, positively obsessed with pithiness. So much so we called it pith. Good times were had.

Such an imperative to brevity could wear on a wordy wench like me, but even I, for a paycheck, understand that sometimes KISS doesn’t stand merely for Keep It Simple Stupid (nor even Kids In Satan’s Service – hah), but Keep It SHORT Stupid.

As with Twitter, sometimes you find yourself in PPT, figuring out which grammar crime to commit in order to stay within the limitations.

I can get pretty criminal in PPT. I commit crimes against my beloved mother tongue which in any other context would be, for me, all but unthinkable.

But I am a morbidly driven cuss when it comes to PPT, and I *insist* upon dealing with it on its own terms, and so my own terms become necessarily secondary.


This is what it’s like having any job, really.

Even writing – you write for yourself first, but if you want to sell, you revise, and eventually you realize there are readers out there.


Going to work as a whole is like Twitter; you edit yourself to fit the 140 character limit. Some folks cover their tatts, some try to remember not to swear, most of us have, to some degree or other, to “leave home at home” even as others have to remember to leave work at the office. We’re all varying successes; what a PowerPoint extravaganza of poorly considered graphical results humanity might be.

Sometimes, you really feel the limits, those tiny boundaries seeming to compress your own resources. It can be hard to stay inside.

When life is churning up enormous emotions: you have to choose which social crimes to commit, at the office. You have to conserve your reserves of good cheer when it’s difficult to synthesize, but you can’t expend negativity in its stead. You constrict, you shrink, you spend a nod instead of a smile and “how are you” – you only have 140 expressions for the day, and they have to be good ones.

PPT can be a poor medium for text.

Offices can be poor medium in which to store your heart, forty hours per week.

Character limits. Suddenly: some layers in that phrase – one of them being “irony” …

Effective Professional Communication: The Approach

To all the people who have to make endless calls, trying to get on executives’ calendars – look, I get it. We all have our scripts to follow. Mine is “time is at an extreme premium” when you call me – and that is not a joke. Yours is “I’d just like to get a few minutes with him to introduce him to our company and what we can do for yours.” You have to do this over and over again with the same unresponsive people, and if you think I don’t know that, you underestimate my ability to recognize your phone number on my caller ID. I know exactly when you call, I know you do it on a repeating schedule. I GET it.

Most of you recognize that I am The Gatekeeper, and you behave accordingly, attempting to schmooze me (pointless) or tell me “He said he’d meet with us” (it worked ONE time, when I was new, and man do I have those guys’ numbers – and they will never, ever get in with my boss, ever) or actually behaving with friendly professionalism (the only viable approach). I entertain these varying gambits with exactly the responses they deserve, always professional, but pretty much hermetically sealed against the jerks who try to get one over on me, and impervious to anything but friendly professionalism. The ones who recognize, we’ve all got our scripts to follow: that, basically, we’re all in this together.

Make it unpleasant for me, and I will return the favor by making “progress” outright impossible for you.

So don’t refuse to speak with me when, instead of asking you “would you like to go to voice mail?” I say “Is there anything I may do for you?”

Don’t fail to realize that, if you want calendar time, I’m the person to ask for it; not my boss.

Don’t try to bypass me by snubbing me with a “Just put me in voicemail” and then leaving a message for my boss which (a) starts out with about twenty seconds of egregiously badly recorded music and (b) then segues into “I am so and so and I am FIGHTING to get a meeting with you.”

It turns out that the music was the Fighting Illini fight song – actually a commendable-ish piece of personalization, not that it actually changes the calendar any – and the “fighting” message was an allusion to that. So, okay, so he didn’t intend to make me look bad.

But this guy has been calling for a long time now, and my boss and I both recognize the number when it comes in now, and he’s never tried to talk with me, never left a message, and – cute as the personalization is – it doesn’t TELL US ANYTHING.

If he’d ever once actually attempted to speak with me like a all-growed-up professional, he could have introduced his company and himself, he could have gotten some information to me (and, that way, possibly to my boss – or, perhaps, even someone else more relevant to his needs), he might conceivably have made some sort of progress. Instead, what we have is enough weeks of calls from the same number that my boss and I both know a number is endlessly pinging us – and nothing else. No skin off of us, but it doesn’t make a GOOD first impression. And zero net effect for our fighting friend.

Who, to be honest, isn’t fighting all that hard, and who is strategizing his battle not. at. all.



It’s impossible not to be brought to mind of querying and trying to get an agent.

We all have our scripts to follow, and whether I personalize or not goes by the wayside if I make a lot of noise, without ever conveying the least bit of information ABOUT MY NOVEL. Or even that it is a novel. Or why I think it’s relevant to Agent X, Y, or Z. Or even make it clear that what I am attempting to do is to query something.


I called myself The Gatekeeper above, and would imagine most of my readers who are writers or agents (they do crop up!) would agree, the gatekeeper analogy in querying/publishing does nobody any favors.

But querying is a professional communication, we all agree on that. And to conduct professional communication in the way my fighting foe above has done would be unthinkable.

(Even now, I suspect Janet Reid, Jessica Faust, and hundreds of other agents are/would have to disagree – they probably do get EXACTLY this approach, from geniuses who’ve found the office number, and wish to treat agents to their honeyed words directly, bypassing slush with their pristine and special snowflakes. We’ve heard about it, and there are countless agency sites exhorting that authors NOT call them directly for a reason.)

It is for ME, and for all my wise and wonderful authorial readers, this would be unthinkable. Of course.

It seems so basic to me – yet I have worked in a fairly stereotypical office setting or another for nearly thirty years. Not all authors do, nor could stand to. And so baseline assumptions for effective professional communications are not there. And, given the creative nature of our product, we may think a creative approach is best in getting it out there.

That can work. But even the most unexpected innovations in getting our work out there, in the successful cases, still maintains essential professional respect. It doesn’t involve stalking agents to find out their alma mater and subjecting their voicemail to extreme lo-fi (do the kids know what low-fidelity means anymore, by the way … ?) fight songs. It involves getting attention without demanding it personally and invasively. Maybe by canny support in service of self-published work that stands the test of marketing success and the expectation of future revenue etc. Maybe in the unique voice of an unexpected character, translated into a simple, ordinary query. Maybe in a hundred ways I can’t think of because I am stodgy and dowdy and doing things the old way.

Not by calling incessantly for weeks, with no message.

Not by FIGHTING for time un-earned, while providing no reason it should be given.

Blood Runs Cold Again

At my job, I take a special pride in some of the more difficult parts. I don’t take great RELISH in them, but when we get a call from someone who’s mad at something that happened with an employee, I have a fair record of satisfying the disgruntled. I take a very real stake in our reputation, and being part of the operations of our business means I am, as they say, “customer-facing” in a unique way from time to time – when people have a problem with us.

Most of those who call with a complaint, it must be said, aren’t calling in a highly emotional state, and even those who are unhappy tend not to begin by taking things out on me. We’re all in the transaction together, and I do everything I can to explain what I’ll do next, to answer for my company’s reputation, and to take people seriously. And they know they’re not calling the person who upset them, really, so more often than not once I’ve gone through a complaint with someone, they are happier once they hang up than when they called.

Only a very few times has someone called me actually angry. Once it was someone in a contracting position of sorts, mad he couldn’t find our location, and when I (nowhere even near the state in which he was lost) was unable to help him (this was in the very beginning of my tenure, and I was not issued street directions to sixty-three offices when I started here) my vice president told me, “Give him to me. Nobody yells at you.”

Once it was a woman so wildly abusive that once she’d cursed at me violently several times in a row, I actually did hang up. There was exactly nothing I could have done to satisfy her, and as much as I care about our reputation, there was no remediating that (nor, frankly, was that really the problem – just a raving maniac). And I don’t get paid to take instruction on the gruesomely biological suggestions being made.

Today, it was someone who may well have had a very real reason for her upset. But I honestly don’t know. Something in a communication from somewhere in our company offended her, and I am sick about that if we said something that caused hurt or anger. But it was impossible for me to triangulate either the nature of the offense, or its source. I attempted a few reasonable questions, was called a disgrace, and requested to twist a fastener of the non-nail variety off before she hung up.

This was upsetting for me, but as problematic as anything in the exchange was that I could not complete the transaction. I couldn’t help – indeed, was outright prevented, by the petitioner herself.

Far more upsetting, though, was that this woman also abused our receptionist. Not only because our receptionist is very good at her job, AND a nice person for whom I feel loyalty and now some protectiveness, but because I’ve had that job before, and I know all too well what it can be like.

I’m no fan of a holler-er, but I can take that and go home and snoodle my beautiful furbabies and marinate in the magical potion of moral superiority (and I can vent at my brother and/or friends). But holler at someone with whom I share a vested concern for my employer, and someone I LIKE? Bite it, caller, I’m not on your side when you scream like a coward at someone you KNOW cannot respond.

As it was, no matter how much I said, “I want to help you” the woman was the rage-version-of-gleeful in accusing me of being angry with her too.

Um. No. You’re not important enough for me to get upset about lady – until you’ve hung up on me and then I find out you’ve abused my coworker.



The night is rain-into-snow, and I brought home my laptop, though our neck of the woods is not in for the brunt of the big snowstorm on its way to a spectacular pummeling of the Eastern Seaboard. It’s not beyond me to think happy thoughts of sleeping in and enjoying a commute only as long as the distance to my home office, wearing warm, comfortable boots. I’m home and I’m safe now, warm and well-fed with the animules (spelling intentional, yes; a dad-ism, and those are warm too).

That execrable human being can’t get me.

But man did she make my BLOOD RUN COLD for a minute there.

Hoping your Monday was a wonderfully dull day. But, if not, please throw in your own “vent” in the comments!

Big Job, Little Job - Soft Nights and Soft Cats

Today was one of those days with The Big Job to do.  In this case, that was a fairly sophisticated and elaborately-constructed confection of Excel and PowerPoint, balancing across the chasm of (thank goodness I have these) two large monitor screens, and basically both sticking out their tongues at me, taunting me.  Unfortunately for these particular Excel and PPT data, I appear to be a reasonably quick study, and the were unable to daunt me entirely.  Four or five pithy and specific questions fell out of the job - but, considering its scope and importance (and the urgency for it - all this was before eleven a.m.), that's pretty good brevity in the unanswered-questions-about-incredibly-involved-numbers department.  Better still, I'm very definitely gaining comfort with a process and with information that, only three weeks ago, I had never seen before.

As old as I am, it appears I am still capable of learning, and it's gratifying not only to "get it" but also to know that my coming to understand these things *makes me more valuable*.

A week or so ago, in one of those hallway-chats with another admin, she said to me, "They have you working on things that are way beyond your job description."  She wasn't pooh-pooh'ing it nor complaining on my behalf, the way we kind of do with office friends, she was just expressing surprise at how much I'm taking on.

I've been part of a slow-starting project which will cross not only all of the business lines at our employer, but also includes a number of departments participating in an initiative.  Not a great deal has happened there, but it's already introduced me to folks and groups I wouldn't know (yet anyway) otherwise, and it's showing me to those people.  Never a bad thing - for me individually, nor for my boss and my group, whom I represent.

I'm also working on this sophisticated update work, which will be a regular task going forward.  Less visible, but ongoing - and so, just as valuable and in (usefully) different ways.

There have been times since leaving my last job, one of a significant majority within my career which was focused on financial services, that I've thought about the opinions Certain People might have about my move.  The industry I've come to is heavily populated with regular guys - you don't see a lot of suits, you don't hear so much self-conscious corporate-speak.  We distribute stuff.  One of the areas of greatest focus in my work now is the fleet.

It's impossible for me not to believe that some of my acquaintances see this move as being downward in a way that doesn't answer to the actual content of my job, my satisfaction with it, the people, or the executive-ness of those I support.  There is this culture in the US, that “white collar” is superior to … well, anything else, in some ineffable (indefensible) way, but:  I just don’t see that.  Not least, because – frankly, how many people even WEAR white collars anymore?  The only people I’ve seen in that old standard, “professional dress” for the past fifteen years have been women.  Oh, we had ‘em at That One Place – but it wasn’t as ubiquitous a conformity of suitedness as you might have found just a few years before I worked at “the second-highest administrative tier of one of the largest financial services firms in the nation.”  Not by a heck of a shot.  It’s all Polos all the time almost anwhere you work now, and if grey flannel was drab, lord deliver me from khakis …  Heh.  (It’s a mighty fine thing I do not go man-shopping when I am at work.)

Anyway – as to the content of my job, which I would consider to be a pretty important factor in any job, let it be said that I see no kind of diminishment in the fact that the information I work with is about trucks instead of servers.  There is nothing intrinsically elite about the hardware of a computer - and, though the computers for which I supported a team to mess with 'em were destined to move our nation's economy ... well, now the trucks I work with have a bit to do with our economy as well, frankly - and I'm much more deeply involved in their particulars than I ever could be in those humming bits of hardware I never even saw.

I see "my" trucks now.  All the time.  Not twenty-four hours ago, I was eyeing one of our drivers on the freeway, making sure he was behaving.  It gratifies me that my favorite places to eat are supplied by people I know, with products I can get behind, that I get to eat well every day at work, that sometimes I'm the real, human voice a person gets when they call our company with a problem or a question.

Yet there is zero doubt in my mind there are people (both those I have worked with, one or two I share blood with, and some I just "know" to one degree or another) who imagine I've moved down in the world.

Yeah, well, this "down" and crucial set of duties I've enjoyed digging into more deeply over the past five months.  It comes with people I respect every bit as much as anywhere else I've ever been, and intriguing little perks too.  There's an aspect of comedy at my office not available anywhere else I've *ever* worked (how many cubes in your cube farm house gigantic glass jugs of wine sitting alongside big jars of minced garlic and giant cans of anchovies, all of which are funny enough - but have recently been befriended by a few pretty sizeable cans of what looks like butane? Party!).  There are the occasional treats left for us to enjoy - not just catering after a meeting, but that one day it was a full crate of breads, or the more-hazelnut-than-cocoa-version-of-Nutella stuff someone had at their desk with a generous supply of sampling spoons.

There is the fact that, seriously, the meat where I work now is easily twenty times better than the stuff at my last job that, even when they tried so hard to make it palatable, seriously was like enough to make the Baby Jesus cry.

That's not small potatoes, kids - you should pardon the expression (not like you get any choice, right?).

Even the fact that the toilets don't flush at me before I've even had the chance to get in the dadgum stall, and I now don't have the tiny, momentary psychic stress EVERY SINGLE DAY of wondering whether the idiot things would do it again - that's one less constant, tiny damned stressor in my life.  All to the good, thank you very much.

I have no more to apologize for in where I work today than I ever had to apologize for in being a secretary at all, is what I am saying.

Not the only point on my mind, though (inevitably).


I haven't taken a lot of time to just REVEL in this job change.  At first – well, it was the holidays and I felt bad about leaving my last job (that was so hard) and I’d been in the habit of lying about even looking for a job for so long maybe the stealth just clung to me.  I know I didn't want to go all gooey and "oh I have this shiny new thing in my life" (again).

But ... I haven't really reveled in a lot of the shiny new things in my life, over the past two years.

Gossamer was easy, and I still revel in his shiny little pearl-grey butt.  Penelope, as everybody knows, didn't kick off a period of easy-as-pie New Puppy Love.  As much as I love her, our honeymoon period was perfumed with poop more than pina coladas, or whatever it is The Kids Today enjoy on their honeymoons (I never really did one of those).  So - the new job, I didn't want to get too excited.  The whiff, in particular, of being a complete snot to my former coworkers, whom I still miss very much, seemed very much inappropriate, professionally.  So I kept the teenage-girl-with-a-new-crush thing tamped down.

I've kept a lot of excitement tamped down, is what I'm saying.  Not wanting to jinx things, or concentrating on other things, or just not wanting to be an insufferable braggart about insert-my-blessing-here.

Seems to me, though there are still and always reasons not to be a shrill little LOOKIT ME drama queen about it, I should perhaps review this policy of constraint on those causes for jubilation I am blessed with.  It's not natural for me, and ... well, you know, three years and counting without a vacation proper – two years of stress and fear since Sweet Siddy La’s death – Mr. X being squillions of miles away.

I could use some reason to get happy.


Pharell, of course, is all very well - but that song only lasts a couple of minutes, and I am no Lupita Nyongo and I know it.  I just need a little seat-dancing.   A little open-windows-going-down-the-road-with-good-driving-music.  Eine kleine nachtmusik, even.  The year has finally realized it's time to provide what my dad always joyously described as "soft nights" (I can hear his satisfied, deep intake of breath now, his low, gruff voice filled with a warm smile).  With luck - I'll get to those unbearably lovely nights in June with more reason to be thankful than I deserve.

We'll see.

For now, moment by moment.  With my great job.  My headache-inducing chart data.  And one non-poopy puppy and a pearl grey cat.

Except the Admin

Throughout my career, I've lived under the caveat, "except the admin."

What I mean by this is, I go to meetings about employee engagement or corporate structure, or participate in training and so on geared to the widest possible swath of a given employee population - and, almost always, the target as envisioned by committee can be defined as "everyone who works here from execs to analysts - except the admins."  Administrative support is always just to one side of whatever is being discussed, always just outside given parameters of training, discussion, expectation, what have you.  I don't think I've ever even SEEN a performance evaluation which relevantly expresses the nature of my job nor provides for development.

It doesn't particularly bug me, but I have brought it up before at meetings throughout the years - "you are interested in diversity but there's always this 'except the admin' configuration" - "this training is not relevant to my job, but there are things that are which are not addressed and should be" - "there is no on-boarding process for admins" - and on and on.

April marks Administrative Professionals Month, and we just completed Women's History Month and right before that was Black History Month.  During each of these months every year, there are voices saying "I'm more than the month (or even the day) you've assigned me for relevance" but these are always ignored.  The fact that Women and Admins fall right next to each other isn't lost on me either - it's no accident that every year when I attend Administrative Professionals events, if there's a man involved at all, he's probably a speaker and not anyone employed in "assisting" anyone for a living and by title.

So it is perhaps odd - and it is certainly maddening - that throughout my entire life, whenever I have heard a story about equal pay for women (happy April Fool's everyone: this is a relevant topic after all) *I* have mentally pronounced the marginalizer:  "Except the admin."

Women don't get paid as much as men in comparable positions.

Admins don't get paid as much as ANYBODY, period.  Ever.

Again, I signed up for it, and I am not starving.  But it's a galling and absolute fact that my chosen profession is seen as less "professional" than others, across the board.  I didn't get an MBA, I didn't go to Wharton, I don't travel for meetings (indeed, if  I can help it, I don't participate in meetings at all except to implement them for those poor souls who must).  I bring, in short, less "value" to an employer.  I worked at one place once, where it was all but explicit that admins were nothing but "OVERHEAD" and were a painful necessity.  This was very heavily part of the office culture.

I don't make $.80 on any man's dollar.  I make $.60 to ANYONE else's dollar.

One of the aspects of being an admin is that, in many jobs, we're the ones who know what everyone's pay is.  And I've never known anyone in any group ever who made even within a 20% margin of as little as I did.  Indeed, it's often as much as a 50% jump between my solitary salary and the next-lowest-paid member of a team.  There is nothing whatever unusual in that.


All this is not to complain, oddly enough, that I don't get paid what I should.  If I have a complaint, it is that people imagine what I do is "menial."

I actually ran across that word just this past week, on LinkedIn.  Some frothy article or other about job seekers - and a commenter who listed herself as an EVP, telling the supposedly heart-touching story of her youthful executive aspirations, subsequent wife-dom and widowhood, and how when she came back into the workforce she had only "menial" CSR and admin work for options - oh, but (let the music swell now) she told the world to stuff that MENIAL work and now she's an EVP.

People like this, who believe my work is "menial", perpetuate a classist and heirarchical culture in the workplace which is entirely inappropriate to the actual efficient running of ANY organization.  Without us "menials", our friend the EVP - and any company as a whole - would not survive for one day.  There isn't an industry, service, nor office which can be run without administration.

One of the difficulties I had in leaving my last job was the degree to which my team understood and valued what I provided for them, objectively and subjectively as well.  Several of them were in the habit of calling me "Goddess" - which might be a patronizing joke in some quarters, but which was a clear marker of their deference to my armament in service of their goals.  One of my executives happily called me Madam Secretary when he realized my relationship to the term, and it was a mutually agreed-upon title of respect.  He even looked for a long time one April, trying to find a card for Admin's Day or Week or whatever, that had the word on it.  "Do you know how hard it is to find a card with 'secretary' on it instead of admin?"

I still have the card.  I still use the gifts he gave me, too.  They were as much appreciated as I was.

I've had jobs where I wasn't given recognition and appreciation.  One, in fact, I lost on March 31 some years back.  I always remember it as the lousiest April Fool's joke ever - "they even got the DATE wrong."  But in fact I was glad to be out of there; I'd been looking for months before they fired me.

And even there, one of my bosses paid me a personal visit one day, to express his outrage that I'd been laid off.  Many of us had, but to my knowledge I was the only one he reached out to like that.



What I do is important.  What I do:  I really love.  You can have your paychecks and your meetings and your TRAVEL, all you non-"menial" types who don't get what I do at all (and who think there's something wrong with me for doing it).  People like that I am immensely grateful I don't have to work with.

The people I *do* work with are still learning just what I have to give.  I'm learning my way around what I can provide and even improve.  In the end, it's a nice time to celebrate my little "month" (or week or day, or whatever anyone gives and/or calls it).  The weather's just getting warmed up ... and so am I ...

Grape Pay

The question becomes:  whose monkey do you want to be ... and ... do you want to carry the rocks for the guys who PAY in grapes?





It's an important question.  Even when so many of us monkeys are told to make do with the grape stems.

Work

The recent interview and a good deal of thought about twenty-seven years as a secretary have been part of an evolution I never asked for but have tried to give honest and serious consideration.  One of the things I said to my bosses when I told them about taking an interview with another group, and posting for other jobs, was that as much pride as I take in my work, even our own conversations have illustrated a possible truth, which is that ... I don't know whether an admin career honestly has legs.  I look around me at the women who have been doing what I do for even longer, and I don't know - I don't trust - that I will have the option to keep doing this, to follow the same road for another twenty (or thirty) years, to retire as an admin.

We'll see what happens with the interview, of course (it was for an admin position), but my instinct is that I would not be a personality fit for one of the key parties - and that is no-harm/no-foul as far as I am concerned.  It is to be hoped I have other options.

For instance ... I've long said that what I do is relationship management, is project management, is communications.  Two communications positions have come open, and I have applied for both now.  One of my longstanding professional references is a senior VP of Communications from a previous company.  Presently, I have a friend and colleague, a longtime communications professional, who is very much behind me (indeed, at the behest of my current management, she has me working with her as a sideline to my regular duties).  I'm a writer, for pete's sake.  And for eighteen years, a large part of my work has been communications:  newsletters, informative and even marketing materials of all kinds, community outreach and special projects, and writing for audiences of varied types and sizes.  I've been doing this for a paycheck, and for most of the people I know, for as long as I can remember.

I'm aware, of course, that as job security goes exchanging one field The Higher Ups sometimes consider extraneous overhead, for a runner-up in the same category (admins go first, then marketing, and communications too) may seem stupid - but the extent to which I've thought about this still makes the option seem worthwhile.  It's not helpful to get *too* far ahead of reality when speculating about job INsecurity.

If need be, I can always edit.

Not the Mommy ... Not the Work-Wife Either

On the one hand, I suppose by today’s standards and expectations, “it’s attention” – and any attention, all attention, is supposed to be good.  On the hand I want to tweak people's noses with, though, this little pat on the head is pretty backhanded.  It actually includes the phrase ‘behind every leader’ ... because, as everyone “knows”, a secretary is not a leader (and, apparently, the WSJ mug who got stuck with this article does not understand that in fact admins stand well in front of the leaders for whom we work, because that's the only sensible place for a gatekeeper to be).

My job these days doesn't involve anniversaries and pets – because I am a professional, and my bosses are not celebrities lacking boundaries.  I am anything BUT a stage mommy, as the article sneers, nor the nose-wiping housekeeper for my team.  Indeed, this article’s position that an executive admin’s job takes a huge toll on their personal life demonstrates exactly the sort of extracurricular expectations that twenty-seven years as an admin have removed from my plate.  I’m an admin precisely because when I leave, I get to *leave* my job.

Of course there are those admins who hold their bosses hands as discussed in this piece – but those are not the rule, they are the people who work for those rare and special snowflakes who consider that they have a relevant need for a 24-hour secretary on call.  I plan my bosses’ travel and events such that they don’t need me at seven p.m. nor at four a.m.  They’re grownups too – and I don’t just mean the current ones, I mean all the executives I have worked for over the past fifteen years since I got out of the clerical trenches and upped the professional game for myself.  The one boss I've ever had who called me off-hours was the guy who once asked me one day for a tortuously detailed daily call log, and who, when I delivered it the next day, looked at me like I'd lost my mind and asked me what that was and why I'd wasted time on such a thing.  Sigh.


I’ve described before the wobbling sine wave of my resume, which has been almost a case study in the 20th/21st-century administrative career.  I have worked at very high levels, but the past five years and some change have not been the most vertigo-inducing of those.  I’m secure, grateful, and very fortunate, but as sensitive as my employment still is, it’s not one with the kind of access I had when I worked in Risk Management at one of the largest securities firms in the country.  I worked with the people who suggested that perhaps offering credit to every toddler, puppy, and inanimate object in the country was perhaps a poor idea ... just before The Whole Thing Crashed, and the discovery was made that credit for toddlers, puppies, and pet rocks was a poor idea.  Sigh.

Some giddy heights, it's easier to live without, truthfully.  But access is always an issue for the admin.  I was a little astonished, in one position, when  people asked me pointblank what my boss might be interviewing for when there was a period of executive flux.  It may be part of my job to know such things, but I never even discussed that with the executive, and it is the most important part of my job not to do so with anyone else.  Good gracious.



As it happens ...  Most recently, the “knowing” in our office finally had to go the other way.  This week, I came out of the closet to management that I am, as the classic phrase goes, “considering my options.”  There was a moment of fear and concern some months ago - and, as the HR wheels turn slowly, now have unexpectedly scored an interview out of an application I submitted more out of a need for control than what I felt was realistic expectation.  Huh.

Obviously, it was no insult to get the call – and I have management who are explicitly supportive, even though they did say don’t want to lose me.  If this particular interview were the direction my career goes (and I hold no breath where this is concerned), the access would return me to a position of exposure to the most sensitive information.  It can be exhausting, but exciting too.

Fortunately, the entity I ultimately work for isn’t populated by execs of the sort who’ll devolve me to hoodie-wearing nor feeding their cats – but then, it isn’t a place from which I would expect to retire at 44 and spend a few months deciding what I feel like doing next either.  As they say at my office, you don’t get rich working for our employer.

The good news is – really, you don’t get poor either.

Rambling Arose

This morning, sitting in one of those very large pep-rally sorts of meetings where my brain simply never escapes the ‘except the admin’ clause in everything that is said, I got to thinking, too, about how the role has changed.  We still remain that necessary evil some types of management wish they didn’t have to have at all (nothing but overhead, an administrative position ... and, yes, I have actually worked at places where that was pretty clear and overtly the outlook) – and yet, particularly at the level I’ve attained, having been doing this work for the best part of a whole generation now, being a secretary ain’t what it used to be.

I’ve long stressed that a good admin is a relationship manager and a project manager.  Lacking the gumption for meetings, classes, and tests, I don’t have the legitimacy a PMP confers, but if I had a schedule of meetings the like of which pretty much all my coworkers endure every day, I’d shoot myself in the neck in a New York minute.  From my chair, I get to PLAN the meetings.

But everybody knows the admin does that.  The changes are more profound.

Every couple of weeks, I round up my two executives and have a short come-to-Jesus with them.  Here’s what’s done, here’s what I’m working on, what have you got for me?  During our most recent one, a hotel issue came up, and – the head honcho decided it was easier for him to handle the problem.  Assistant Vice Honcho said the same, and I was pretty chagrined and joked about me calling them together to make them do my job.  This actually turned into a fruitful conversation, though.

The Moneypenny position used to make every bit of sense.  Executive has important things to do, so part of what secretary does is manage the administrivia.  But ... these days, an awful lot of administrivia has reached a level of convenience for which that irritating joke is apropos:  “there’s an app for that.”

After the 2008 financial crisis and massive job losses across the country, the greatest sector affected was administrative workers.  The evil overhead positions were cut, divvied up, and a shocking percentage of those eliminated will never come back.  I’ve read about this and heard it most recently on NPR, but there’s plenty of material out there (I am being too lazy to link for you; this time, I won’t be your secretary and do it for you ... heh) illustrating this sea change in our career culture.  There are many who think the day of the secretary is over, thanks to helpy little apps and all the functionalities in the calendars we carry with us, which “personally” manage so much more than schedules (without so much as a person involved).

And yet, the death of the admin is just another buzzing in my ear, like the death of Real Books, the death of rock and roll, the death of civility, and so on.  People like to honk on about this stuff, but what I see is evolution.

As my bosses strategized a path forward where, as the best writer, the best editor, the creative core of our group, I’ll take on more presentation work and thereby gain the benefit along the way of a better understanding of the technical side of what our team really does, I heard echoes.  None of this is new.  I have done newsletters for the better part of twenty years.  I was the customer service agent for orphan insurance clients who did not have an agent, at one job.  I assisted the house attorney in penning a book about estate planning (no, it never published; still, I did the work, and typed the phrase “death tax” more than a body ought to have to ...).  I have been in ownership of our staff recognition program for nearly two years now.

I’m still the secretary.

Yet I own all these things, and have owned this sort of thing for almost the length of my career.  If I saw myself leaving the title of “admin” behind, it would always be in the name of taking fuller ownership of a function like this, with a much more sophisticated level of involvement and execution.  A friend recently left the title behind to take on video conference coordination at her location.  It’s nothing she hadn’t had plenty of exposure to before; as an admin, we have exposure to all sorts of things.  Indeed, to take on a job like that is a NARROWING from the breadth of a secretary’s job duties – but a deepening of the authority over this area.  From a coordinator, she’ll become much more of a technician, and build a niche with an identity people relating to her will find more concrete.  The change is, I have no doubt in my mind, something that people will perceive as a “better” job.

Me, I love my job.

But it is hardly beyond my ability, to imagine that little recognition program I own, and remembering when I was part of that much much larger quality assurance program, and when I wrote that newsletter way back when, and to believe that in the right universe, that could be a job unto itself, and a more complex and interesting tool than it is.  It isn’t beyond my ability to perceive that so much of what I have done for many years includes entire programs, managed by me, because budget isn’t “there” for those programs to become something bigger.  What has kept me from acting on dreams of “I’m going to rule the world of” (fill-in-project-blank-here) tends to be corporate structure and money.

Since September 11, 2001, tasty little jobs devoted to telling people they’re simply spiffy are thin on the ground, at best.  More to the point, since that day, my career has been one of sustained *sustenance*.  I lost my place with a boss I loved (shoot, I even miss his wife and his dogs) and spent eight months unable even to *volunteer* my time because everyone else had lost their jobs, too, and you literally couldn’t give it away back then.  Habitat for Humanity didn’t even return my calls!

Then I got in with WS – interestingly enough, in their quality assurance division.  I parlayed that temp job into a low level gig which represented a massive pay cut for me, something over twenty percent.  Networked and WORKED, and parlayed that into a midlevel gig.  Networked and WORKED, and parlayed that back up to executive status.  I was at the top echelon of one of the largest securities firms in the country (working with the guys who *didn’t* want to hand out credit to every Tom, Dick, and Fido) when, thank you 2008, the economy once again collapsed.  In the seven years since it’d done that last, I had promoted myself three times.  And once again I found myself at mid-level and thanking my lucky stars to be even there.  When the next layoff came, it took only three months for me to get a senior administrative gig, and I have been grateful ever since – and, frankly, baffled that I even got seen.  My resume hit this employer electronically, I knew nobody here, and I got my foot in a door most people can’t even get close enough to knock on.

Even today, I still haven’t regained the trajectory I had begun in 2001, or rebuilt by 2008.  In 2007, it was possible to imagine building a job all its own out of the responsibilities which have always been part of an admin’s roster of projects.  That isn’t the world right now, and that is okay.  It is probably one of the unseen motivators which got me to write a novel, and to take on the great load of work that brings with that, which can be so much harder than the actual writing.  I wouldn’t want to give that up for a “real” job, either.  It doesn’t mean I’m not motivated, and don’t dream at my job.

It just means that I never forget, I work because it pays for my life.

I write because that’s a big part OF my life.

Back to Work

Having been out of my office for two days, I was of course duly punished by my inbox, but though it put me to an hour and a half OT today, the smack on my hands was not too dire.  At least, in terms of consequences for my *team*.  There was a pretty spectacular fire drill late in the morning, which thank heavens (a) came up 24 hours in advance of a point where it would simply have been a disaster, and (b) worked out (did I mention thank heavens?).  Shew.  But for the most part, surprisingly, I  dug through a lot of work in decent time during the first half of the day.

I caught up some dropped travel which fell through the cracks of my being gone and our Travel Goddess being gone, but without ugliness.  Caught calendars up, had a pointless meeting, responded, responded, resolved, got on top, and got ready.  For that fire drill-inducing event (coming tomorrow), I got some final prep in good shape, not least of which was that (b) part mentioned above.  Never took lunch, but I was savvy enough to order pizza yesterday, so I had leftovers, and had a piece for breakfast, a piece a few hours after that, a piece for a later lunch/snack as well.

Parceling the slices out between parceling out the accomplishments, I parceled in some of my little at-the-desk calesthenics, and managed to both clear my inbox VERY nicely, but even the outbox as well, and (astoundingly) my hard copy "work in progress" file.  For a while there, the remainder was just filing, which is almost endearingly quaint of me to even indulge in 2012 - but I like being endearingly quaint, of course.

Speaking of which, one of my bosses sent me a package last week (a good admin would have had it in my hands on-the-day, hah) for Admin's day.  Being a good sort, he worked hard to find a card that said something about a wonderful SECRETARY instead of an admin, and I grinned, because I knew he'd done that on purpose.  Per my suspicions on that point, he did mention finding one that said "secretary" on it wasn't easy.  Heh.  Stupid Hallmark.

By early afternoon, realizing I wasn't so much fighting uphill as really just having a decent day's work of it.  AND enjoying some nice cold pizza (and laughing because my dad would just cringe - he always winced and said "don't you want to heat that up?" when we were kids ...).

Of course, it did not last - though my afternoon did, until about quarter after six.  Ah well.  In at seven a.m., worked through lunch - shoot, it was a 12-hour day.  And tomorrow, I expect will be a bear, with a major event I am pretty much singlehandedly responsible for cruise directing.

If I can get through tomorrow, things will look good for the rest of this week ...

AP Day

Today has been Administrative Professionals' Day (one of my managers, wise to my ways, IM'd me to say Happy Secretaries' Day - and earned yet more points thereby, heh), and I feel like I should say something, but there isn't a great deal leaping to mind.  In a career widely envied by my peers, I've been fortunate to work for people I respect and like more often than otherwise - but, even out of a crop of bosses I've been enormously grateful for, right now my two officers are *remarkable* people.  I get to work for these guys.

Since the exit of the sexual harasser (not worthy of my time to go back and link posts about that), I also get to say - I really like my whole team.

This is among the blessings of my life.  I work for an entity which won't move away, merging with some other entity, which will then merge with another, degrading my career with every move along the way.  I can feel how valued I am, every day.  It gets frustrating, yeah.  Every job does.  This is why they pay us to do them.  But ... the frustration isn't dark and creepy.  The frustration isn't coming from within, it's not a sense I am wasting my time.  It's just the nature of having any job, of working with hundreds of people across multiple time zones, of things going wrong, or happening at the wrong time, or just my own having a headache and being cranky.

As much as I tell my management and colleagues how grateful I am every single day - they tell me it's mutual every day, too.  And, as I think about it, "every day" may really be a literal figure.  I am thanked, I am high-fived virtually and in person, I *know* what I add to my team, and they know too, and we are all pretty damned happy about it.

My job, when I took it, was partially to make myself a hub - to create not only an effective network of support for our group, but also to provide certain aspects of our identity.  I've done that both interpersonally and literally, taking ownership of our recognition program, taking ownership of our newsletter, being heard, reaching out.


***


All this is to say:  I love my job - and, what is more, I am grateful to have it.  Not merely grateful to be working in this economy.  Not merely hopeful, and even secure.  But incredibly, consistently, completely grateful.  I pray, for all the children of G-d, that everyone should be so blessed.  Should have such fulfillment, and the gladness in it.

Happy Secretaries' Day indeed.  And Happy Admins Day, to all!!  Heh.  G-d bless us, every one ...

*Sputtering Speechlessness*

I *GET* that this is hardly a serious assessment of my job.  But it DOES represent what all too many people expect is its worth.

There are an AWFUL lot of us admins in the world, doing what you need to have done and guarding the gates to the things and people you need the most.  Thinking of us as the irrelevancies the picture dismisses us as being is dead-sure certain to get in your way at some point or another along the way to your goals.  This includes business (you won't get to the boss if you don't respect the admin) ... and PUBLISHING, too, by the way, writers.  You do realize:  admins read your work too.  They might even be your first-line to "this goes on the desk" (or "stays in the inbox").